Saturday, May 11, 2013

More pictures from AFICC 2013 -- Two of us (Julie G. and Andrea B.) took Lucy Landry's embroidery class on Friday -- Embroidered Faces from Ancient Sources. It was an excellent class, brimming with visual inspiration.

Lucy brought many of her own dolls, and the chance to really peer at the stitches up close and see how each one was used in different situations was wonderful.

She also let us peek at her notebooks, and walked us through the design process to create figures and characters based on very old artwork.

One technique she taught us to turn old imagery into our own personal interpretation was something she called 'nearly' blind contour drawing (because it's too hard to resist looking just a little bit!).

Here you can see the drawing that Andrea made while not really looking at the inspiration mosaic. Details like curls and pupils were definitely added after, but the main lines were all drawn contour-style.

And here are the faces in progress near the end of the class. We all had a great time and learned a lot.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Pictures of the eight of us from Indianapolis (and surrounding neighborhoods and/or states) who were lucky enough to get to go to Artistic Figures in Cloth and Clay this year. A wonderful time was had by all, and this is proof that we were really there...

Julie G. and Andrea B., all dressed up

Julie and Sandy (in her daughter's $700 doctoral cap)

Jude, Denise, and Barbara
(Denise's "hat" was improvised from the loveliest tissue de toilette)

Julie and Liz

Katie

Not Hat and Heels night, but the Indy Cloth Doll ladies at the 'learn to make a fabric bead' table

The Doll Gatherers, of Aurora, Ohio, brought an amazing club display -- The Wedding Party.
Starting with the 'Mother of the Bride' pattern by Jill Maas, the club created an entire extended family, all dressed in their best to wish the newlyweds well. It looked like the club must have had a LOT of fun creating this.

Doll Gatherers club display

The other big group display was the Doll Street Dreamers Wizard of Oz challenge. Somehow, I never took a full group picture (although here's a link to Doll Street's photo), but here are some of my favorites.